The Girl Who Played with Fire

Noomi Rapace portrays Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” based on the second of Stieg Larsson’s novels.Credit
Knut Koivisto/Music Box Films

Those who need a break from the romantic travails of Bella Swan — and who like a best-seller-list tie-in for their moviegoing — will welcome the release of “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” the second installment in the Swedish trilogy based on Stieg Larsson’s novels. Hollywood remakes are not far off, but what Anglophone actress could match the intense rightness of Noomi Rapace for the role of Lisbeth Salander? Ellen Page? Carey Mulligan (listed as “rumored” on the IMDB Web site)? Miley Cyrus?

Mr. Larsson’s “Girl” books (including the last one, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” which was recently published in the United States) may not be great literature, but it would be foolish to deny that Lisbeth is a terrifically compelling character. She embodies so many cultural fantasies and anxieties that it is hard to imagine anyone who could resist her magnetism. Antisocial and deeply principled, a computer nerd with lethal fists, a chain-smoking sexual athlete and merciless scourge of sexual predators, Lisbeth elicits disparate instincts in viewers (and in some of her fellow characters) that are less contradictory than mutually reinforcing. Do you want to protect her? Sleep with her? Hang out with her? Or be just like her?

By “you” I mean primarily Mikael Blomkvist, the muckraking, bed-hopping journalist who is Lisbeth’s confidant and alter ego, and the conduit between her inscrutability and the audience’s desire to know her better. Mikael, as played by Michael Nyqvist, is as open in his demeanor as Lisbeth is secretive, though he also frequently operates by means of indirection and outright deceit.

The two of them — Watson and Holmes; Nick and Nora Charles; Robin and Batman — unravel grim conspiracies involving powerful men and poke at the underbelly of modern society, where misogyny, political authority and capitalist greed fester and commingle.

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” directed by Niels Arden Oplev, was a serviceable but not terribly inspired cinematic introduction to Mikael and Lisbeth’s world, seriously marred by literal-minded depictions of violence that blurred the line between provocation and prurience. The sequel, directed by Daniel Alfredson, is no less concerned with cruelty to women (the original title of the first book is “Men Who Hate Women”) — and no less outraged by the extent to which sexual exploitation goes unpunished — but does not need to assault (or titillate) the audience to make its point.

The satisfactions it offers are those of above-average serial television: nasty villains (including a hulking blond boxer played by Mikael Spreitz) and intrepid heroes; elaborate mysteries with tidy solutions; a workaday environment rendered realistically, with an occasional stylistic flourish.

The plot this time concerns a young journalist and his graduate-student girlfriend who have been delving into a sex-trafficking ring with patrons who are highly placed in the political establishment. The investigation sets off a chain of events that ensnares Lisbeth; her sometime lover, Miriam Wu (Yasmine Garbi); and also her tormentor and legal guardian, Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson), whom she dealt with so memorably and harshly in the first movie.

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Like Harry Potter, Lisbeth is drawn simultaneously forward and back, toward fresh dangers that are connected to a rotten, unresolved past. Readers of the novels will know the revelation about her father that lies in store here, but even viewers coming to the material fresh are likely to figure it out before Lisbeth does.

In the meantime, she and Mikael continue parallel manhunts, Mikael’s sometimes aided and sometimes obstructed by a shambling detective named Bublanski (Johan Kylen), and Lisbeth’s conducted mainly through her own tenacity and wit.

And it is Ms. Rapace’s fierce and sly performance, more than the themes or the plot, that sustains “The Girl Who Played With Fire.” Without her, it would be a not bad procedural, touching on some knotty contemporary issues and infused with a paranoia that is at once unsettling and comforting.

But Ms. Rapace, tiny and agile, her steely rage showing now and then the tiniest crack of vulnerability, belongs to another dimension altogether. She makes this movie good enough, but also makes you wish it were much better.

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Daniel Alfredson; written by Jonas Frykberg, based on the book by Stieg Larsson; director of photography, Peter Mokrosinski; edited by Mattias Morheden; music by Jacob Groth; set design by Maria Haard and Jan-Olaf Agren; costumes by Cilla Rorby; produced by Soren Staermose; released by Music Box Films. In Swedish, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. This film is not rated.